MORTAL ✰ ISAAC LAHEY

[CHAPTER 19]

LMAO BRACE YOURSELVES. YOU'RE IN FOR A WILD RIDE. [I HATE MYSELF FOR WRITING THIS. IT KINDA HURT]

The I.C.U.

The noise was the only constant. The continuous beeping of multiple machines was making Scott feel more on edge as he found himself presenting his weary appearance to the front desk of the hospital. He had no words and even if he did, the words would've gotten jammed in his throat and he would've coughed up an intangible response.

He could hear all the bustling noises of the hospital and it wasn't until now that he had noticed how much was happening. It made him dizzy just thinking about all the commotion and the suffering that could be happening just a door away from him or even a floor up. It made his skin crawl at the thought of how life could just float on by, but it made his stomach churn as he pictured his sister in the same circumstance of suffering.

Scott was a silent shamble of who he usually was, but the busy nurses and doctors all recognized him easily anyways. It was as if they knew he would show up sooner or later and he would be in a complete disarray when he did.

He hated the pitiful glances that filled the worn out faces around him. It was a familiar look, but it was something that was never directed at him — this time he was being singled out and no amount of sympathy that others could conjure up would make him feel any better. It felt like a large hoax to pretend that everything would be okay and that everyone else understood exactly how he felt.

He had emotions swirling through his mind like a catastrophic hurricane and no one could compare how they felt to how he felt right now. He doubted anyone else could summon a list of the same exact feelings he felt right now and make him feel any better about how his life quickly shattered in his hands. If anything, pity and sympathy were two things that weren't strong enough to keep his sister alive now, so the poor imitation that they would become was just a thin plastic sheet designed to keep the last of his soul from pushing through and dissolving away.

It took a lot of his strength not to scream and portray his feelings, but the thought of his twin sister's life hanging by a thread connected to a ticking time bomb quickly made him forget about his anger.

The nurse on-call was admittedly one of his mother's friends, but in that moment, he couldn't remember her name if his life depended on it. Sure, he had greeted her many times before and he knew that his mother loved to hint about her love for her children to the other nurses, but he couldn't get his sister off of his mind.

It hurt to think about her, but the ache in his heart was better than the emptiness in his chest later when she was long gone, forever forgotten, and fading away like a whisper in the wind. The pain was a heavy burden that sat violently inside him, but if he let himself succumb to it completely, it felt like he would never be able to get rid of it. It would just slowly spread through his veins and darken his soul to the point of no return.

He would lose himself to this kind of pain — but he would lose himself if he lost the one person that meant more to him than all the materialistic objects he could lay eyes on and all of his loved ones combined. He couldn't lie to himself about this — he loved his mother more than anything, but his twin sister was the one person who he loved more than his mother. She was born to be his other half and until now, he never realized how much she actually meant to him.

It was the idea of losing something so beyond valuable that made him realize how much he actually cared. It was the pressure and overwhelming feeling of loss that made him see an outcome so vividly that he feared the image would never be able to leave his mind.

He could already see his future sprawled out in front of him, but instead of having his sister at his side, he saw empty spaces that felt like the definition of incomplete.

As the nurse beckoned for him to follow her to the elevator, he pictured birthdays meant to be joyous occasions but instead, they only felt lonelier and wrong. As he was stood shaking and bucking away from the nurse's attempts at comforting him, he saw one less graduation cap thrown in the air, one less late night laughing at jokes and tv screens, one less wedding toast he hoped to make, one less happy bride, one less beaming smile, one less cuddly child, one less laughing sister, and one less future.

The more he thought about it, the more he realized that it was one of the paths he might end up on — there was no guarantee, even from the beginning, that life was fair.

He could only believe in that as the metal doors slowly pulled themselves open and he was stuck standing in the elevator. He was terrified despite the comforting hand on his back, and his feet were glued to the floor. It felt like he would never face this fear; he didn't even know how much he was scared of losing Skylar until it became a reality.

The elevator doors had threatened to close at least four times before the tired nurse gradually began to nudge him out into the warzone in front of him. She had a monotonous attempt at slowly submerging Scott into the chaos, but after having to press the button to keep the elevator doors open while simultaneously giving apologetic looks to those needing to use the elevator numerous times, she decided that babying Scott might not get anywhere.

Luckily for her, Scott's legs found a way to grasp onto the reality of the situation, despite being shaky and a bit unstable as he took steps forward. He was stuck in his mind and in a nightmare at the same time, but the only way forward was through.

So Scott found himself steered towards the I.C.U. with a fervor — he was even left alone immediately after seeing his view of his sister being kept alive by a tangle of tubes, wires and machinery. For some reason, his mother was nowhere to be seen and he had not noticed the prying eyes of any of his classmates yet. The only one focused on the window between himself and his possibly dying sister was himself as the nurses and doctors made their rounds and tried their best to give him a hint of privacy.

He didn't understand why no one was there in that moment. The air felt forsaken as he stood idly in front of the glass alone. There wasn't anyone there to hold him as he felt himself fall apart, but there also wasn't anyone to hold together the pieces of his sister either.

He definitely didn't have the right words or the right actions to convince himself or anyone else that things would be fine. There weren't any right words for a moment like this, and there certainly wasn't anyone around to choke out words of wisdom or wrap their arms around him in this moment. In this moment, he was alone and too afraid to bare his soul in front of his sister, but he couldn't get rid of the nagging thought that from now on he would lose his other half and never get the chance to say what he really felt.

He couldn't bring himself to spew out the jumble of words in his mind or convey some deep and profound emotion that he had kept bottled up. He couldn't even stop shaking or wipe away the fountain of warm tears that hadn't stopped since he heard the news. He couldn't even sputter out a simple sorry for his lack of words.

The only words that could even make it past his lips were so full of emotion that he couldn't even hear himself clearly. In fact, if it hadn't have crossed his mind a hundred times before they reached his lips, he wouldn't have noticed that them either.

He wouldn't be able to recall what he uttered from his heart — "I love you more than anything. Please don't leave me."

// remind me why i did this??? um. ok but thanks for 1k reads!! last time i updated this, which was about a week ago, there were about 500 or so reads and a different cover as well. i know i said i'd update sooner but i'm a liar sometimes and i spent the whole week not doing anything except for cry over how much i miss twenty one pilots and read fanfiction too much. also, i've added a bunch of new fanfics that i probably won't ever update because i'm lazy. anyways, enjoy this and please don't forget to vote and comment!! it validates me because what's life without validation